The Independent
SIMON DENYER
September 6, 2015
Beijing is spreading its influence by stumping up the cash to build desperately needed infrastructure throughout Asia, but with little consideration for communities or the level of corruption. Simon Denyer reports from Phluk in Cambodia
The thump of jackhammers and the whine of drills pierce the air. Above the river a concrete wall is slowly rising.
In lush, north-eastern Cambodia, the £530m Lower Sesan 2 Dam stands as a potent symbol of China’s growing reach, and Beijing’s ambitious plans to expand its influence throughout Asia by building some desperately needed infrastructure.
But almost 5,000 people are likely to be evicted from their villages when the dam’s reservoir fills, and 40,000 living along the banks of the Sesan and Srepok rivers stand to lose most of the fish they rely on for food. Yet this dam project is part of a much larger Chinese ambition: President Xi Jinping is making a bold move, billed as the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, to restore what he sees as Beijing’s historic place at the centre of Asia.
Mr Xi is working behind the scenes to surpass the United States as Asia’s regional power. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Cambodia, a country that has found itself drawn into China’s orbit and lured away from the West with the promise of easy money, offered with no strings attached, for roads, bridges and dams.
“Without infrastructure, you can’t revive,” said Cambodia’s Commerce Minister, Sun Chanthol. “We have been blamed for always going to China, but it is because we need infrastructure fast, nothing more than that. Are there any conditions put on Cambodia by China? I can tell you: absolutely nothing. No conditions at all.”
Mr Xi says he wants to restore ancient trading routes, to create a new “Maritime Silk Road” through the seas of Southern Asia and a new “Silk Road Economic Belt” across the deserts and mountains of Central Asia. Beijing’s plans are already unfolding across the region, with China simultaneously making new friends, and new enemies, as it spreads its wings.
Cambodia emerged in ruins from the chaos of the Vietnam War and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Now at peace, its economy is growing fast but is in desperate need of transport infrastructure and power. China is stumping up the cash, with none of the tiresome conditions the World Bank attaches to its lending, Cambodian officials say, and none of the complaints about human rights that emanate elsewhere. There is not even much concern about corruption.
Construction of the Sesan 2 dam is seen on May 7, 2015 in Stung Treng, Cambodia (Getty)
Yet in the villages around the Lower Sesan 2 Dam, the drawbacks of this Chinese largesse soon become apparent. Typically, it is being brokered by the two nations’ elites with little consideration of local communities.
With the threatened loss of most of the rivers’ fisheries because the dam will block key migration routes, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians could feel the impact. It is, a study suggests, the most damaging of dozens of dams proposed on the Mekong’s tributaries in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos between now and 2030. Yet the dam’s environmental assessment reports have failed to take this into account, and the project includes no compensation for lost fish stocks.
